Dexter Dementor - Chapter 1: Tonight's the Night
by xetrix
Summary: Dexter Morgan is a magical crime analyst with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. By day, he studies magical crime across London, helping the Aurors catch the darkest mages in the country. By night, he hunts the criminals who evade the system and dispenses a macabre form of justice. This crossover was inspired by a writing prompt on Reddit and is part 1/3


Tonight's the night. And it's going to happen, again and again. It has to happen. Nice night. London is a great town. I love the food. Fish and chips, my favorite. But I'm hungry for something different now.

I wait across from his usual spot, when I see him. Atticus Bromley; dropped out of Hogwarts his fifth year after he hexed a first year student for looking at him "funny". His penchant for violence had been exacerbated by the untimely (and some said suspicious) death of his father Manfred Bromley, former executive at Nimbus. With more money than he could possibly waste in one lifetime, Atticus had decided to devote himself full time to his favorite hobby: using magic to torment people. Magic has a funny effect on the criminally inclined. It can empower the kind of monster who really ought to kept in a dungeon far from anyone. I remember when he first appeared on my Foe-Glass. I had been called to a Muggle residence is Faversham where a woman had been found killed by an enchanted necklace. I arrived on scene first and met the Auror who'd responded.

"Sykes, Auror. You're from the Ministry?" he asked, looking strangely skeptical.

"Dexter Morgan, MLE Crime Lab. What do you have?" I asked.

"Victim is dead. Strangled by a hexed necklace by the looks of things. No surprise there."

"Why's that?" I asked as we headed into the house. I was a quaint spot, the kind of place one lives in to blend in, sitting in a long row of identical houses. The only thing distinguishing them apart was the customary flower beds reflecting the owners favorite color. We stepped on on to the porch and entered the front door.

"You'll see. She's famous if I'm not mistaken" he said as we made our way up the stairs to the bedroom. She was sitting at an ornate vanity opposite her equally ornate bed. These two pieces of furniture stood out from everything else in the house, which was much more modern. I looked at the victim's reflection in the vanity mirror. It was hard to make out. The necklace had not been kind, cutting deep into the skin around her neck, drenching her in blood.

Blood. Sometimes it sets my teeth on edge, other times it helps me control the chaos. Odds were she had bled out long before the necklace could strangle her, but the examiner at St. Mungo's would have to determine that for sure. If the spell had been any more powerful, it likely would have decapitated her. I moved in front of the body to get a better look and that's when I recognized her.

"Now you get it eh?" said Sykes. "That's…"

"Rita Skeeter, yeah. Well I guess this answers the question of where she's been hiding all these years." Life after the Death Eater uprising hadn't been kind to the former journalist. She'd been ousted from the Daily Prophet for her anti-Potter rhetoric during the war, and some said death threats had driven her into hiding.

"Nasty way to kill anyone." Said Sykes. "Whoever it was must've really hated her"

"Not necessarily" I replied, moving in close to examine the necklace. "Most cursed items are bought accidentally, never affecting their intended target. Sometimes they're even made accidentally; the creator never realizing what he's made until it hurts someone."

The necklace was made of silver and fashioned to look like lace. It cut deep into her neck, such that only the front where a patch had colorful gems set, stuck out like a twisted metal necktie. The door downstairs opened.

"That'll be your man from the Misuse Department I'll wager" said Sykes, who headed downstairs to greet the man. I looked over the body. Cursed items had never been my style. It's a coward's weapon; a means of killing from a safe and comfortable distance. Maybe it's because my victims deserve their fate, but I never have trouble looking them in the eye when they die. I prefer to be there. Have to be there.

"He's right in here" I hear Sykes outside the door. When the door opens, I sigh almost from a lack of surprise. It had to be Weasley.

"Has anyone touched it? Has it made any noise or given off any strange smells?" Arthur had taken one look at me and gone straight to work. He never wasted small talk on me, not even then. I've always managed to blend in, maintain a façade of friendly rapport with my colleagues at the Ministry. Everyone but Weasley. It wasn't hard to catch him staring at me, as if expecting me to transform into a dragon at any moment. I could never understand how, in a building full of Aurors all supposedly possessing a keen insight to the human soul, is Arthur Weasley the only one who gets the creep from me?

"No" I said. "Probably a Constriction Jinx or a Strangulation Curse. Source is the necklace." Arthur bent down and examined the body.

"Good lord" he said, "It's Skeeter." He pulled out his wand, muttered a spell, and tapped the necklace lightly. I heard the click of the clasp releasing, but the necklace was so embedded in her neck it remained in place. Arthur sighed.

"Strangulation Curse; obvious enough" said Weasley. "One use only though. Already the effects are fading. But a powerful constriction, made with a lot of hatred. Odds are it was cursed recently, and hastily. I'll let you handle the recovery. I'm going to make sure she doesn't have any other enchanted items lying about for Muggles to find." And with that, he strode out the door, seemingly glad to get away from me. Using the point of my wand, I hooked one of the silver loops of the necklace and slowly extricated it from Skeeter's neck. She'd been dead a while. Her thickening blood oozed slowly from the wound when the necklace was removed. Despite having made so many corpses in my time, I found the whole scene rather unpleasant. There was no care in this kill. No purpose or satisfaction from the killer. My father would call it careless, a crime of emotion. I placed the necklace in a giant hide bag as I considered the possibility that, despite her infamy, Skeeter may not have been targeted because of her past, but by someone she knew ore recently. Her writing had been inflammatory, but the people she had disparaged in print had all been vindicated. Her shaming and exile had seemed more appropriate at the time. At that moment I sensed another presence in the room. I turned around to see Sykes staring at the body, a strange look in his eye.

"Shame, really. She used to be quite lovely for cunning hag" he said, looking at me for some validation. I shrugged. I had little interest in the victim at this point. The real person of interest to me was the person responsible.

"The goal now is to source the necklace" I said. "Either someone cursed a necklace they knew she'd wear, or she's been shopping down Knockturn Alley in which case we'll need to track down the seller. But that's more your department no?" I looked back at Sykes. He was staring at her body again. Something wasn't right.

"Yeah" I said, pressing on as if his silence were expected. "But that would be strange. She went through an awful lot of trouble to hide amongst Muggles. Why go shopping near Diagon where she might be recognized?"

"She's been out of the spotlight for a while. Maybe thought it was safe?" said Sykes, seemingly coming out of a trance to look at me. The strange look in his eye was gone. I felt a tingle somewhere in the back of my mind. There should be other Auror's here by now. How had Weasley and I arrived before them? Perhaps some other matter had them tied up. Sykes pretended to poke about the room, glancing at Skeeter's body as if confused by it.

The door suddenly flew open with a bang and there stood Weasley, wand at the ready, flanked by two Aurors. They took aim at Sykes and shouted "STUPEFY!"

Three jets of red light blazed past me. There was a loud pop, as I turned just in time to see Sykes apparate. The three spells collided with the mirrored doors of Skeeter's closet, which shattered spectacularly. The three wizards at the door turned their wands towards me.

"What the hell, Arthur?" I said, not daring to reach for my own wand. Somehow I suspected they had confirmed what I had just guessed.

"Why did you come here tonight, Morgan?" said Arthur, not lowering his wand.

"I was on duty, I got a priority memo" I said.

"Me too" said Arthur. "Except that nobody from the Aurors sent them. Bronn and Larsen here are the first ones to hear about this" He studied me closely, gauging my reaction.

"Then who was that?" I said, pointing to the shattered mirrors.

"That," said the one called Larsen, "was Walter Sykes, an Auror who's supposed on holiday in South America". He glanced at Bronn. Both seemed to decide wordlessly that I was probably not Imperiused and lowered their wands slightly. Aurthur did not.

"You'll need to be debriefed tonight Morgan, to ensure he didn't sneak a hex on you while your back was turned. Do you have the necklace?" He held out his hand and I tossed the giant skin bag to him. "Right then," said Weasley, "I think your work here is done. Larsen will remain here, you go back with Bronn. He's got to report this to the rest of the department." Arthur finally lowered his wand to let me past. Bronn seemed to eye me skeptically, wondering why I inspired so much caution in Weasley.

Rita Skeeter, it would turn out, was Atticus's fifth victim, though nobody knew his connection at the time. The department made finding Walter Sykes their top priority, even going so far as to put their new golden boy, Harry Potter on the case. That Sykes had called in the crime himself, but to the sub-departments rather than to Magical Law Enforcement headquarters, was by far the biggest mystery to everyone else. A tool used by the real killer at work. And it was this shadowy individual I wanted to see petrified on my slab. Sykes was the key; I had to find him before anyone from MLE, and I had to do it while avoiding the persistent gaze of Arthur Weasley.

I recall all this as I follow Bromley down the route I've learned quite well these past few nights. In two blocks he'll turn down a dark alley that leads to the hole in the wall where he makes his nest. But tonight, for the first time, he won't be alone.

Tonight's the night…


End file.
